Painting Butterflies
by precious-passenger
Summary: Kurt has some really bad habits whenever he's nervous. A simple cure is all it took to get rid of it.


Title: Painting Butterflies

Summary: Kurt has some really bad habits whenever he's nervous. A simple cure is all it took to get rid of it.

A/N: This just randomly popped in my mind. I really liked the idea and I guess I didn't care if this is sort of a really short fic.

* * *

Kurt didn't know how it all started. Some of the kids in his class sucked on their thumbs, some would start rocking back and forth and mumbling to themselves. Kurt could swear he saw Noah Puckerman, the scary looking kid who liked to act tough, take out a pacifier from his backpack and put in his mouth.

As a second grader, Kurt was a very nervous kid. It didn't help that all the boys in his class would make fun of him or play jokes on him and it caused him to always be alert, ready for danger to strike.

So, when he got anxious or Daddy didn't come right away to pick him up from school and Kurt would worry that he might've forgotten him, he'd start biting his nails. When he got his first B+ ever and couldn't face going home, his whole thumb's nail was gone. Until his Mommy assured him that she loved him no matter what grade he got and promised to work on getting it better.

Soon he ran out of nails to bite, so he started plucking his eyebrows or pinching a random spot on his body when he got stressed.

Kurt got caught of this habit when the tip of his nails started bleeding. His Dad raised hell over it and he could hear him and his mother arguing on how he should put pepper on his fingers or ground him or have Kurt visit a counselor. His mother disagreed and asked Burt to leave the matter in her hands. That she would deal with this.

Kurt had been listening in the whole argument and couldn't help but start licking at the tip of his fingers, imagining how it felt to bite them. He knew he shouldn't do it, but his parents fighting made him nervous. Mom and Dad shouldn't fight. Not when Mommy has gotten so weak lately.

The next morning Kurt got up and was surprised to find his mother standing by his bed. She opened her arms and Kurt threw himself at her and she caught him with some effort.

"Mind if I sit?" she asked and Kurt came down and scooted over and leaned his head on his mother's shoulder.

"Look what I brought with me…" she told him excitedly, as if letting Kurt in on a big secret. It was a stash of nail paints of different colors.

"Do you want me to paint your nails?" he asked, looking enviously at his mother's pretty and long nails.

"No, we're going to paint yours," she announced and patted the space between her legs for Kurt to sit down.

She started to paint each of them to the color Kurt wanted, one blue, one red, one orange and so on. And when she finished painting the surface they both blew on them until the paint dried off.

Then, his mother put his right hand on her knee and began to paint more delicately. When she was finished, Kurt wiggled his hand free to look at it. It was a butterfly.

Soon, his fingers were full of butterflies. He shook them, feeling happy.

"You're going to take care of them now, okay? And they would die if you chew on them, you know," she said and Kurt looked down in shame but his mother turned his chin up and didn't speak until she saw Kurt smile.

"Don't let your butterflies die, Kurt," was the last thing Elizabeth said before leaving an awestruck Kurt to play with his new friends.

* * *

Now, Kurt was sitting behind his desk, hating how high school had turned out. He could manage the academic aspect of classes but the mean children in middle school had all buffed up, unlike Kurt, and would no longer just threaten to hurt him. They would toss him in dumpsters, shove him to lockers and lock him up in janitor's closet for a whole day.

It was the last day of summer and he was dreading starting his sophomore year.

He began idly picking at a pimple across his cheek. It had just been a simple tiny little spot, but the more he picked at it, the bigger the next generation of that pimple came out. Now it was covering a fairly huge part of his cheek and that's going to earn him some extra insults. As if he didn't hate himself enough, he had to have a zit to hate him more.

The memory, however, was a bittersweet moment. It was one of the last memories he had of his mother. But, it always made him smile that how he'd stopped biting his nails, or as his mother put it 'taking care of butterfly'. Every now and again the butterflies would fade and he'd come to his mother for a repaint. The last time he did was in the hospital, a few days before she died. After that, vanity or maybe maturity prohibited him to do something as petty as harming his body, however trivial it was. But, the resolution hadn't lasted long.

An idea struck him and he started searching his drawers for markers. He only got a blue whiteboard one for noting important assignments on the whiteboard handing across his desk.

Kurt stood up and went straight in front of mirror, concentrating hard to draw it just as he remembered.

Two triangles, meeting where the ugly zit was, two tentacles on top of its head and lots and lots of spot on its wings. He looked ridiculous, but hopefully it would work.

He wouldn't let his butterfly die.


End file.
